Philip Walsh, Conductor

Born in Southampton, English conductor Philip Walsh has been Music Director of Lyrique-en-Mer since 2002.  He studied at Cambridge University before spending a number of years working in New Zealand where he established himself as one of the country's leading musicians. With the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra he conducted works such as Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Saint-Saëns' Organ Symphony, the Verdi Requiem, Tippett's A Child of Our Time, Orff’s Carmina Burana and Berlioz L'Enfance du Christ, and for the New Zealand Festival,  Stravinsky's Les Noces.  He founded the New Zealand Festival Choir, performing Handel’s L’Allegro with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and he was Music Director of the Wellington Youth Orchestra.  Philip Walsh has commissioned and conducted a number of premieres of works by New Zealand composers, making numerous recordings of new music for Radio New Zealand.  Now resident again in Europe his credits include Peter Brook’s La tragédie de Carmen, the world premiere of Jürgen Simpson's Thwaite (Almeida Opera, London), La bohème (English Touring Opera), Don Giovanni (Vigo, Spain), Thomas Ades's Powder her face (Metz), Britten’s Death in Venice also in Metz, with L’Orchestre National de Lorraine and the world premiere of Emily Hall’s Sante with the London Sinfonietta at the Aldeburgh Festival.  As Music Director of Lyrique-en-Mer his performances include La Traviata, Le Nozze di Figaro, Dido and Aeneas, La bohème, Die Zauberflöte, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Carmen, Falstaff, Don Giovanni and Orfeo ed Euridice and he returns in 2008 to conduct Tosca and Brahms’ German Requiem.